Footnote:
"The Church is a free association; there is much to
be gained by
separation from it. Conflict with error
has no
weapons other than
thought and feeling. One uniform type of
doctrine has not
yet been elaborated; divergencies in
secondary matters
arise freely in East and West; theology is
not wedded to
invariable formulas. If in the midst of
this
diversity a mass
of beliefs common to all is apparent, is one
not justified in
seeing in it, not a formulated system, framed
by the
representatives of pedantic authority, but faith itself
in its surest
instinct and its most spontaneous manifestation?
If the same
unanimity which is revealed in essential points of
belief is found
also in rejecting certain tendencies, are we
not justified in
concluding that these tendencies were in
flagrant
opposition to the fundamental principles of
Christianity? And will not this presumption be transformed
into certainty if
we recognize in the doctrine universally
rejected by the
Church the characteristic features of one of
the religions of
the past? To say that gnosticism or
ebionitism are
legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must
boldly deny the
existence of Christian thought at all, or any
specific character
by which it could be recognized. While
ostensibly
widening its realm, one undermines it.
No one in
the time of Plato
would lave ventured to give his name to a
doctrine in which
the theory of ideas had no place, and one
would deservedly
have excited the ridicule of Greece by trying
to pass off
Epicurus or Zeno as a disciple of the Academy.
Let us recognize,
then, that if a religion or a doctrine
exists which is
called Christianity, it may have its
heresies."
The author's whole argument amounts to this: that every
opinion
which differs from the code of dogmas we believe in at a
given
time, is heresy. But
of course at any given time and place men
always believe in something or other; and this belief in
something, indefinite at any place, at some time, cannot be
a
criterion of truth.
It all amounts to this: since ubi Christus ibi Ecclesia,
then
Christus is where we are.
Every so-called heresy, regarding, as it does, its own creed
as
the truth, can just as easily find in Church history a
series of
illustrations of its own creed, can use all Pressensé's
arguments
on its own behalf, and can call its own creed the one truly
Christian creed. And
that is just what all heresies do and have
always done.
The only definition of heresy (the word [GREEK WORD], means
a
part) is this: the name given by a body of men to any
opinion
which rejects a part of the Creed professed by that
body. The
more frequent meaning, more often ascribed to the word
heresy, is
--that of an opinion which rejects the Church doctrine founded
and
supported by the temporal authorities.
[TRANSCRIBIST'S
NOTE: The GREEK WORD above used Greek letters,
spelled:
alpha(followed by an apostrophe)-iota(with accent)-
rho-epsilon-sigma-iota-zeta]
There is a remarkable and voluminous work, very little
known,
"Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie,"
1729, by Gottfried
Arnold, which deals with precisely this subject, and points
out
all the unlawfulness, the arbitrariness, the senselessness,
and
the cruelty of using the word heretic in the sense of
reprobate.
This book is an attempt to write the history of Christianity
in
the form of a history of heresy.
In the introduction the author propounds a series of
questions:
(1) Of those who make heretics; (2) Of those whom they made
heretics; (3) Of heretical subjects themselves; (4) Of the
method
of making heretics; and (5) Of the object and result of
making
heretics.
On each of these points he propounds ten more questions, the
answers to which he gives later on from the works of
well-known
theologians. But he
leaves the reader to draw for himself the
principal conclusion from the expositions in the whole
book. As
examples of these questions, in which the answers are to
some
extent included also, I will quote the following. Under the
4th
head, of the manner in which heretics are made, he says, in
one of
the questions (in the 7th):
"Does not all
history show that the greatest makers of
heretics and
masters of that craft were just these wise men,
from whom the
Father hid his secrets, that is, the hypocrites,
the Pharisees, and
lawyers, men utterly godless and perverted
(Question
20-21)? And in the corrupt times of
Christianity
were not these very
men cast out, denounced by the hypocrites
and envious, who
were endowed by God with great gifts and who
would in the days
of pure Christianity have been held in high
honor? And, on the other hand, would not the men
who, in the
decline of
Christianity raised themselves above all, and
regarded themselves
as the teachers of the purest Christianity,
would not these
very men, in the times of the apostles and
disciples of
Christ, have been regarded as the most shameless
heretics and
anti-Christians?"
He expounds, among other things in these questions, the
theory
that any verbal expression of faith, such as was demanded by
the
Church, and the departure from which was reckoned as heresy,
could
never fully cover the exact religious ideas of a believer,
and
that therefore the demand for an expression of faith in
certain
words was ever productive of heresy, and he says, in
Question 21:
"And if
heavenly things and thoughts present themselves to a
man's mind as so
great and so profound that he does not find
corresponding words
to express them, ought one to call him a
heretic, because he
cannot express his idea with perfect
exactness?"
And in Question 33:
"And is not
the fact that there was no heresy in the earliest
days due to the
fact that the Christians did not judge one
another by verbal
expressions, but by deed and by heart, since
they had perfect
liberty to express their ideas without the
dread of being
called heretics; was it not the easiest and most
ordinary
ecclesiastical proceeding, if the clergy wanted to get
rid of or to ruin
anyone, for them to cast suspicion on the
person's belief,
and to throw a cloak of heresy upon him, and
by this means to
procure his condemnation and removal?
"True though
it may be that there were sins and errors among
the so-called
heretics, it is no less true and evident," he
says farther on,
"from the innumerable examples quoted here
(i. e., in the
history of the Church and of heresy), that there
was not a single
sincere and conscientious man of any
importance whom the
Churchmen would not from envy or other
causes have
ruined."
Thus, almost two hundred years ago, the real meaning of
heresy was
understood. And
notwithstanding that, the same conception of it
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