HERESY 733 to it ; a heresy was a crime with punishment annexed, and therefore was capable of legal definition. It was an offence in canon law, and it was also for long an offence according to civil law. The theological meaning, and the definitions according to canon law and according to civil law respect ively, are all different from each other and must be sepa rately explained. 1. The Theological Sense of the Term. The early Christian writers say a great deal about heresy, but com monly refrain from telling what it is. They describe heresies, but they only denounce heresy. It is vain to look for a definition of it in Irenseus s Against Heresies, in Hippolytus s Refutation of all Heresies, in Tertullian s Prescription against Heretics. It is possible, indeed, to collect from these one or two leading tests of heresy, but no definition is to be found. The common features of heresy are too well known to call for specific enumeration. We can gather from Irenseus that heretics are those who reject Scripture, who refuse to accept the " doctrina tfadita," who deny the authority of the clergy who have come in regular succession from the apostles, who keep aloof from the Catholic Church, the sole depositary of apostolic doctrine (Against Heresies, iii. 2-4). Tertullian, in his usual succinct manner, calls every man a heretic who does not at once accept the " Regula Fidei," and he refuses to argue with such a man even though the heretic proceeds to adduce arguments from Scripture. "A controversy over Scripture with heretics can clearly produce no other effect than to help to upset either the stomach or the brain " (Prcescr. adv. ffcer., 16). In the Eastern Church, after the period of the oecumenical councils, Tertullian s test was the touchstone of heresy. The church had her rule of faith expanded into the Nicaso-Constantinopolitan creed, with the various explanations added in the symbols of the remaining oecumenical councils, and a heretic was one who denied this creed in whole or in part. In the Vf estern Church, on the other hand, theologians were accustomed to define heresy in a vague way. Thus Jerome calls heresy "perversum dogma"; a heretic, with him, is one who interprets Scripture in other fashion than according to the witness of the Spirit of God ; and Augustine summarily defines heresy to be the invention or retention of new and false opinions. But whatever the definition, the rough and ready test was always nonconformity to the " formula fidei pra?scripta ab ecclesia Eomana." Instead of definition the Eastern Church simply points to the creed and the oecumenical councils, the Western Church to the rule of faith enjoined by Rome. These meagre definitions, extracted from the writings of early theologians, all of them going back in the last resort to the recognized creed of the church for the time being, imply, in spite of their vagueness, that there is a certain essential kernel of doctrine in Christianity, which cannot be denied or challenged without involving the destruction of Christianity itself, and they all point the way to a fuller description of what is meant by heresy in the theological sense of the word. Heresy is a doctrine which, with the appearance of Christian doctrine, is really contradictory to the essential nature of Christianity, and, if persisted in, would in the end make Christianity something very different from what it really is. In order, therefore, to say what heresy is, it is necessary to know what the essential nature of Christianity is, and therefore heresy is generally described by reference to the fundamental nature of Christianity, while the real nature of Christian doctrine is commonly brought out by contrasting it with heresy. When we look at the matter historically we see that Christianity has always taken the shape of a community thinking and acting for the most part together, and that it has always implied a common life, common work, common ideas. Christianity appears in history as a community whose common w r ork is to confess and to adore God because of what He has done for His people in salvation. This twofold work of confession and worship has manifested itself in a double organization, an organization of thought and an organization of work, doctrine and polity. There may be the church without a creed, and the heart-church without the congregatio ; but that is not the way in which Christianity has taken actual historical shape. It is possible to conceive the entrance of a heterogeneous element into this organization on either side. A heterogeneous element, something really foreign to it, may become organized with the church s doctrine, or may have become incorporated in the church s polity, and whenever this happens there is a doctrine, apparently Christian, which is really subversive of Christianity, there is a polity which, apparently Christian, is really opposed to the real life of the congregatio. This possibility is the historical root of the origin both of heresy and of schism ; for heresy is just a heterogeneous element imbedded in the organized dogmatic of the church, and schism is a foreign element which has found its w r ay into church polity. This description, how ever, is somewhat misleading, because it may happen that an element which seems heterogeneous is not really so, but is on the contrary a true part of the organization. Heresy is not only apparently but really foreign to the system in which it has become incorporated. Its nature is different, and its source is different. Mere apparent incongruity, therefore, does not prove heresy. A doctrine must be seen to be really contradictory to the fundamental facts of Christianity, and to have come from a different source, before it can be called a heresy. It has frequently hap pened, accordingly, that doctrines have been judged heretical which a better acquaintance with the nature of Christianity would have pronounced orthodox. Christianity, under the many forms which it assumes, has always implied the reconciliation of God and man through the person and work of Christ. It implies that Jesus Christ the Saviour has so brought it about that He has established a new kingdom of God which will last, in which men have communion with God through His Spirit. Christianity is complete when the kingdom of God is fully established. " Thy kingdom come " is its aspira tion. It therefore implies a moral separation between God and man a separation which is overcome by the work of Christ the Mediator. The idea of reconciliation is the central thing in Christianity, the essential part in its description. God, man unable to approach God until reconciliation has been made, Christ the Mediator who reconciles, and His people brought again into communion with God, all Christian doctrine rings the changes on these four fundamental ideas. Whatever contradicts or tends to destroy these, or their relations to each other, is incompatible with Christianity. Whenever any of these four ideas God, man, Christ, and the kingdom of God are so misread as to introduce notions incompatible with the relations in which they stand to each other in Christianity, then heresy enters. Theology therefore (and Protestant theology only carries the idea somewhat further) has usually recognized four kinds of heresy, corresponding to the four fundamental ideas on which Christian doctrine rests. The nature and character of God and of His relation to the universe and to man may be so misread as to make reconciliation an impossible thing, and so also may the nature of Christ, the nature of man, and the nature of the results of Christ s work among men. Hence arise heresies about God, about the person of Christ, about the nature of man, and about the results of Christ s work all of them being doctrines which are incompatible with
the idea of reconciliation.