Is There an “Essence” of Heresy?
Is There an “Essence” of Heresy?
What, if anything, is the essential feature of heresy? What defines a heresy and distinguishes it from something that is simply wrong or questionable? We have already noted that early Christianity was characterized by a diversity of views on some issues. Yet this diversity was not seen in itself as an intellectual threat to the fundamental idea of Christian unity, even if it may have occasionally generated a degree of dissent and factionalization within or between Christian congregations. We have also reflected on Walter Bauer’s view that many visions of Christianity existed in its first phases, often associated with specific geographical regions and each of which was regarded as orthodox by its followers. Some early versions of Christianity that were accepted as orthodox at the time, he argued, were later demonized as heresies as the Roman church tried to impose its own version of Christianity on other cities in the region.
In this view, a heresy is basically an earlier orthodoxy that has fallen out of favor with those who possess power and influence in the Christian world. What determines whether a set of ideas is heretical or not is whether those ideas are approved and adopted by those who happen to be in power. Orthodoxy is simply the set of ideas that won out; heresies are the losers.1 While this idea of lost or suppressed Christianities has a deep appeal to some, it is historically very difficult to sustain. The process of marginalization or neglect of these “lost Christianities” generally has more to do with an emerging consensus within the church that they are inadequate than with any attempt to impose an unpopular orthodoxy on an unwilling body of believers.
Others have rightly pointed out that it is impossible to offer an account of the “essence” of heresy in that it would necessarily represent a socially constructed or negotiated entity. Such accounts of heresy often are written from some supposed position of objective historical truth that is held to exist apart from and independently of Christian evaluation and interpretation. This “view from nowhere” of the phenomenon of heresy cannot even begin to encompass the distinct identity or significance of heresy. Increasing emphasis within early Christian scholarship on how social identities are constructed and maintained has drawn attention to how certain movements are designated as heretical as a means of safeguarding the identity of a community. Heresy is thus not an observable or empirical reality but a socially constructed entity.2 To speak of the “essence” of heresy is thus to make a fundamental category error. What makes a heresy is not so much its ideas as the way it is characterized and categorized by others.3 Underlying this approach is a rhetoric of separation similar to that which served to sharpen the emerging distinction, soon to become a fissure, between Jew and Christian.4
There is undoubtedly merit in recognizing the importance of the strategies and mechanisms by which certain groups were designated as or determined to be heretical. Orthodoxy is indeed a “discursive institution,”5 concerned with “naming” the other, the outsider, and potential threats. Yet such a judgment is not predicated solely on the will of the one who names, but also on the characteristics of what is named. It is about one group’s assessment of another group’s significance for its own identity and security. This immediately entails that heretical is not an empirical characteristic; it is negotiated or constructed. But it does not follow that this is an arbitrary or invented conclusion. It represents an act of discernment on the part of the church that a certain set of ideas are ultimately destabilizing or destructive. It is thus entirely appropriate to inquire as to what general patterns or characteristics are shared by movements or sets of ideas that were designated as heretical. This is especially the case when the issue is approached from a Christian perspective, as in the case of this work.
So what is the characteristic feature of heresy, distinguishing it from other variants of Christianity? By the fourth century, the term “heresy” was generally being used regularly to designate a teaching that emerges from within the community of faith on the one hand yet is ultimately destructive of that faith on the other. The central defining paradox of heresy is that it is not unbelief; it is rather a vulnerable and fragile form of Christianity that proves incapable of sustaining itself in the long term. Nor can heresy be characterized in terms of questionable practices or ethics.6 Orthodox Christian writers were perfectly aware that moral ambivalence and failure were a common human concern and could not defensibly be argued to be exclusive to heretics or unknown among the orthodox.
Heresy is thus to be understood to refer to an intellectually defective vision of the Christian faith, having its origins within the church.7 This assertion may cause distress to some Christians, who might find the notion of heresy as originating within the church unacceptable. This is a perfectly understandable reaction. Yet to understand why heresy is such a dangerous notion for Christian churches, the question of its relationship with the church must be addressed firmly and fairly. The seeds of heresy may come from outside the church, but they take root in her garden. Heresy is not unbelief. Nor is the term used to refer to a non-Christian belief system. Neither atheism nor Aristotelianism are heresies. To use a biological analogy, heresy shares a lot of the theological DNA of orthodoxy. Or to use the sociological categories of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), heresy and orthodoxy share a common doxa—the “taken-for-granted” assumptions of an age or community.8 Yet they diverge at points of critical importance, despite holding so much in common. From an orthodox perspective, the divergence creates incoherence and instability within the doxa as a whole.
The early church regarded heresy as dangerous not so much on account of any challenge it posed to contemporary church authority figures or structures, but on account of its implications for the future of Christianity itself. While orthodox Christian theologians often used extravagant and inflated language when referring to heresy, there is no doubt that their strident tone and their aggressive vocabulary reflected their concerns about the survival potential of Christianity itself if it was contaminated or damaged by what they considered to be impoverished and emaciated versions of Christianity. Heresy was a flawed, deficient, anemic, and inauthentic form of Christian faith that was inevitably doomed to extinction in the pluralist and intensely competitive world of late classical antiquity. Orthodoxy had greater survival potential, prompting a “search for authenticity” as a means of safeguarding its future.9 To understand this point, we must consider the threats to Christian faith in its early period, which prompted this concern on the part of theologians to marginalize what they regarded as its deficient variants.
Threats to Early Christianity
Christianity faced three major threats during its first centuries. The first was physical—the constant possibility of persecution, with its implications for the suppression of Christian communities, and the threat of violence against its leaders.10 Since the Roman authorities generally had little interest in making fine theological distinctions between various forms of Christianity, the notions of heresy and orthodoxy proved to be of relatively minor importance in confronting this challenge. From a Roman outsider’s perspective in the second century, Christian heresy and Christian orthodoxy were just different forms of Christianity; both were unauthorized.
The second was the danger of intellectual or religious assimilation.11 For example, Christianity had emerged from within Judaism; there was a risk during its earliest phases that it might simply revert to its roots, in effect becoming a new Jewish group (a hairesis, in the neutral sense of the term). More significantly, as Christianity became a growing presence within Greco-Roman culture, there was a corresponding danger that it would become assimilated to cultural or religious groups that were already well established, thus losing its distinctive identity. Cultural assimilation is all too often the prelude to ecclesial extinction.
While many theologians of the early church may have overstated the case for suggesting that heresy represented a form of Christianity that had been diluted by secular ideas, the potential danger that such a process represented was clear. If the salt of the Christian faith were to lose its saltiness, what would remain? The church had to maintain its identity by safeguarding its distinctiveness. Tertullian (c. 160–c. 220) was one such writer to express a deep concern that an uncritical importation of secular ideas might ultimately lead to the secularization of the church and the loss of its identity and integrity.
For philosophy provides the material of worldly wisdom, in boldly asserting itself to be the interpreter of the divine nature and dispensation. The heresies themselves receive their weapons from philosophy. It was from this source that Valentinus, who was a disciple of Plato, got his ideas about the “aeons” and the “trinity of humanity.” And it was from there that the god of Marcion (much to be preferred, on account of his tranquility) came; Marcion came from the Stoics.12
Tertullian here interprets philosophy not in a neutral sense, as a quest for wisdom, but in a sense of “worldly wisdom,” thus creating the conditions for the inevitable secularization of Christian ideas and values. For Tertullian, heresy made the church porous to ideas that would rob the church of its stability, leading to a situation comparable to a ship that was slowly sinking through taking in (secular) seawater. In much the same way, Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–c. 236) likened the church to a boat: “The world is a sea in which the Church, like a ship, is beaten by the waves, but not submerged.”13
A third danger was the fragmentation of Christianity through intellectual incoherence. As Christianity became more deeply embedded in late classical culture, it was subjected to increased criticism by its intellectual and cultural opponents. Some of the most formidable of these criticisms concerned the coherence of Christianity’s ideas. Leading critics of Christianity, such as Celsus (fl. c. 175–80) and Galen of Pergamum (129–200), argued that its leading doctrines could not be taken seriously by cultured people.14 Any intellectually defective form of Christianity was vulnerable in this critical environment. Heretical conceptions of faith, it was argued, lacked the rigor of their orthodox equivalents.
It can be seen that the second and third of these factors are of importance to any attempt to understand the notion of heresy. It will also be obvious that these factors are in tension with one another. Tertullian, for example, argued that any attempt by Christian theologians to be intellectually respectable by the standards of their day merely led to their becoming contaminated and seduced by pagan philosophy. Although Tertullian’s argument that engagement with secular philosophy leads to a heretical understanding of Christianity is widely regarded as something of an overstatement, there is nevertheless a grain of truth in his concerns.
Similarly, in the fourth century Arius (256–336) offered an understanding of the relationship between God and the creation that was regarded as philosophically rigorous by the standards of the time. Yet for his opponents, such as Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 293–373), the understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ that resulted from this philosophically driven approach was incapable of reconciliation with the orthodox faith, especially its worship. Arius introduced radical inconsistency into the Christian understanding of its core identity, leaving it seriously vulnerable to intellectual criticism on the one hand and cultural erosion on the other. As Thomas Carlyle once commented: “If the Arians had won, [Christianity] would have dwindled away into a legend.”15 The accuracy of this judgment may, of course, be contested. Yet it is reasonable to suggest that, had certain forms of Arianism gained the upper hand, Christianity might have transmuted into something akin to Islam. This is not to criticize Islam; it is simply to point out the importance of certain fundamental ideas in shaping the life, worship, and witness of communities of faith. The vision of faith offered by Arianism is quite different from that offered by orthodox writers such as Athanasius of Alexandria.
Heresy and Orthodoxy as Doctrinal Concepts
Although Christianity emerged from within Judaism, it rapidly developed its own distinctive identity. One of the most striking differences between the two faiths, evident by the early second century, is that Judaism tended to define itself by correct practice, whereas Christianity appealed to correct doctrines. Many Jewish writers continue to argue that the essence of Judaism is halakhah, an attempt to organize human life around the fundamental principles of the Torah.16 One should therefore speak of Jewish orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.
While the New Testament is critical of certain aspects of Jewish orthopraxy, such as circumcision, the emerging Christian response to Judaism takes the form of a shift toward orthodoxy as much as a rejection of existing orthopraxy. Christians declined to adopt the cultic rituals of Judaism (such as food laws, Sabbath observance, and circumcision) that served to identify Jews within a Gentile community; on the other hand, Marcion’s proposal that Christianity should be declared utterly distinct from Judaism failed to gain support.17 There was an obvious polarity within the relationship of Christianity and Judaism. As a result, Christian self-definition was initially directed toward clarification of the relationship of Christianity and Judaism, centering upon the identity of Jesus and subsequently upon the role of the Old Testament Law.18 It is thus perfectly acceptable to suggest that the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith represents a theoretical justification for the separation of Gentile Christian communities from Judaism.19
Yet the emerging Christian communities found themselves obliged to distinguish themselves from other communities as well. The church was not to be identified with Judaism on the one hand, nor with “the world” on the other. Even in the New Testament, a sharp distinction can be seen emerging between “church” and “world.” The distinction was initially understood, at least in part, in terms of separation from the world. Perhaps encouraged by an expectation of an early end to all things, the first Christians appear to have formed communities based on shared loyalties and specific commitments rather than explicitly theoretical notions.
Early Christian communities do not appear to have regarded precise and elaborate doctrinal formulations as essential to their self-definition, in that they were already distinguished from the world by sharing in their meetings and worship. In the words of R. A. Markus, “Their doctrinal distinctiveness, however defined, was reinforced, sustained, perhaps even eclipsed, by their sociological distinctness as groups set, literally, apart from the world.”20 Thus, on the basis of one understanding of the Johannine community, this group regarded its circumstances as a group set apart from the world as being explained and legitimated by the accounts of Jesus Christ’s words and actions transmitted within the fourth Gospel.21
The very early Christian communities, although clearly bearing a “family resemblance” on account of their beliefs concerning Jesus of Nazareth and their ways of worshipping him, did not require doctrinal formulations to distinguish themselves from the world: that distinction was already forced upon them by the world, which isolated them as visible and readily identifiable social groups.22 To become a Christian was (at least potentially) to be liable to a visible change in social location, which in itself was adequate for the purposes of being demarcated from society.
Yet there were limits to social and physical approaches to demarcation. The early Christians, unlike the Essenes, did not withdraw into the wilderness; they remained in the world of the cities and their institutions, gradually developing means of existing in the world without being of the world.23 “We Christians,” Tertullian wrote to his pagan audience, “live with you, enjoy the same food, have the same manner of life and dress, and the same requirements for life as you.”24 So how were they distinguished from other communities of the period?
Doctrine came increasingly to represent a means by which Christian individuals and communities might be distinguished from the world around them—especially as the beliefs, values, and actions of the Christian community came to converge. Controversy with Gnostic and other communities forced the Christian communities to develop their understanding of self-definition and led to increased pressure for creeds and other authorized statements of faith.25 Although the contribution of Irenaeus of Lyons to this process during the late second century was pivotal, the importance of Tertullian in urging self-definition and the maintenance of self-identity within the Christian communities must not be overlooked. Yardsticks—such as the canon of the New Testament and adherence to the apostolic rule of faith—were agreed upon by which the claims of religious communities to be Christian churches could be tested.26 Doctrine came to be of increasing importance in distinguishing the church from secular culture at large and in increasing a sense of identity and cohesion within its ranks.
Doctrine thus came to be a significant factor in shaping Christian identity. So how did the early Christian communities define and identify themselves? In the first phase of Christianity, there existed none of the precise normative doctrinal formulations—such as the Nicene Creed—that became so pervasive and influential in the late fourth century. It is certainly true that some later writings in the New Testament, especially the Pastoral Epistles, show a clear concern about the danger of “false teaching”27 and recognize the importance of developing institutional structures capable of responding to these threats. However, while such writings emphasize the importance of “sound teaching,”28 this is not defined or illustrated extensively by using creedal statements.29
The historical evidence suggests that both the New Testament and early Christian writers tended to emphasize the center of the Christian faith rather than focusing on policing its periphery. Jesus Christ was widely regarded as defining and marking the core of Christianity. Paul sets out what seems to have been a prototypical Christian creed when he places the affirmation “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9) at the heart of the Christian confession.30 Paul links the confession that “Jesus is Lord” with the call to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 10:9–10). Here, as throughout the New Testament, “Jesus is Lord” is inseparably linked with Jesus’s resurrection, and so identifies him as the “living one” he is not a dead, though revered, figure from the past, nor does his appeal lie merely in his ideals or his inspiring life. When Paul speaks of Christ as the head of the body,31 his language clearly points to a central role for Christ in both communal and personal Christian existence. This is evident, for example, in both prayer and worship. Jesus Christ stands at the heart of early Christian worship as both its agent and object.32 Indeed, the worship of a Christian community may be regarded as underlying its capacity to be a local church while at the same time participating in a more universal reality.33
Yet the focus of a Christian community does not determine its limits.34 Historical developments soon made it necessary to address the question of whether there were indeed boundaries to the Christian church; and, as this question came increasingly to be answered in the affirmative, it was followed by two equally pressing successors: who had the right to set such limits, and how were they to be determined? Hedges had to be placed around the pasturelands in order to safeguard those who had found sanctuary there.35 These “hedges” appear to have taken three forms: cultic, ethical, and theological.
In the first place, Christianity sought to distance itself from those who insisted on cultic practices that would amount to a reversion to Judaism—such as the need for circumcision for male believers and rituals concerning unclean foods. Second, Christians who behaved in certain unacceptable ways were regarded as having transgressed certain boundaries. Third, and most important for our narrative, Christianity came to place an increased emphasis upon certain theological ideas that were held to be essential to the faith. Yet despite this growing recognition of the importance of Christianity’s boundaries, Christian communities appear to have regarded its center as being of greater importance well into the second century. There appears to have been relatively little interest in policing the periphery of faith; churches appear to have preferred to accentuate the importance of their central focus, especially in worship. Yet from the middle of the second century onward, the policing of the perimeter appears to have been regarded as increasingly important if the identity and authenticity of the Christian faith were to be maintained.
As the churches increasingly defined themselves using doctrinal terms, so they identified threats to their integrity using the same categories. Orthodoxy and heresy were both conceived in terms of “right thinking,” with other possible means of definition being marginalized. Ways of maintaining Christian authenticity, as well as threats to that authenticity, were now conceived of doctrinally. “Sound” doctrine was edifying to the church, just as corrupt or deformed doctrine was destructive.
So how are we to understand the threat posed by heresy? One theoretical model, developed in the early nineteenth century, has some potential to help us appreciate both the distinctive character of heresy on the one hand and its threat to faith on the other. In what follows, we shall consider the theory of heresy developed by the noted Protestant theologian Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834).
A Model of Heresy
Schleiermacher is widely regarded as one of the most significant liberal Protestant theologians. Writing in response to the rise of the Enlightenment, Schleiermacher subverted any attempt to reduce theology to rationalist platitudes. There is more to the Christian faith, and hence to Christian theology, than the exercise of the mind. Religion is not a particular body of knowledge nor a specific variety of action, but is rather a form of consciousness. There is a deep experiential dimension to faith that reason cannot fully apprehend. Doctrines, creeds, and other statements of belief are thus to be seen as a form of second-order reflection on the immediate experience of faith, which is of primary importance. Although Schleiermacher’s distinctive approach to theology is of interest in its own right, it is his model of heresy that we shall consider here.
What is heresy? For Schleiermacher, heresy is anything that contradicts the essential identity of Christianity, even though it retains the formal outward appearance of Christianity. Heresy is therefore to be thought of as a deficient form of Christian belief that preserves the appearance of Christianity while contradicting its essence.36 This immediately locates the sphere of heresy as lying within, not outside, the church. Yet this definition also requires us to define the “essence” of the Christian faith. Without an understanding of the “essence” of Christianity, it proves impossible to define what heresy actually is. Schleiermacher’s definition places Jesus of Nazareth at the center of things:
Christianity is a monotheistic faith, belonging to the teleological type of religion, and is essentially distinguished from other such faiths by the fact that in it everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.37
For Schleiermacher, the rejection or denial of the principle that God has redeemed us through Christ is tantamount to the rejection of Christianity itself. To deny that God has redeemed us through Jesus Christ is to deny the most fundamental truth claim that the Christian faith dares to make, and thus amounts to unbelief. The distinction between what is Christian and what is not, between faith and unbelief, lies in whether this principle is accepted; the distinction between what is orthodox and what is heretical, however, lies in how this principle, once conceded and accepted, is understood. In other words, to reiterate the point we made earlier, heresy is not a form of unbelief; it is something that arises within the context of faith itself.
Heresy thus results, Schleiermacher argues, when it is affirmed that “everything is related to the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth,” but this statement is interpreted in such a way that it is reduced to incoherence. If Jesus of Nazareth’s central and fundamental place is asserted, yet interpreted in such a way that it is implicitly denied or rendered inoperable, the outcome is heresy.
This approach can be found earlier in the history of Christian thought. For example, the great Anglican theologian Richard Hooker (1554–1600) noted how a series of basic heresies arose through misunderstanding the identity of Christ. In his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593–97), Hooker wrote as follows.
There are but four things which concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord Jesus Christ: his Deity, his manhood, the conjunction of both, and the distinction of the one from the other being joined in one.38
According to Hooker, a failure to affirm each of these, coherently and responsibly, leads to a distortion of the core teachings of the Christian faith: Arianism, by denying the divinity of Christ; Apollinarianism, by “maiming and misinterpreting” his humanity; Nestorianism, by “rending Christ asunder” and dividing him into two persons; and Eutychianism, by “confounding what they should distinguish.”
Schleiermacher follows Hooker in identifying four “natural types” of heresy that arise from an incoherent understanding of Jesus of Nazareth.
If the distinctive essence of Christianity consists in the fact that in it all religious emotions are related to the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ, there will be two ways in which heresy can arise. That is to say: this fundamental formula will be retained in general…but either human nature will be so defined that a redemption in the strict case cannot be accomplished, or the Redeemer will be defined in such a way that he cannot accomplish redemption.39
Schleiermacher thus notes how it is possible to affirm that “all religious emotions are related to the redemption wrought by Jesus Christ” while at the same time to deny that humanity needs redemption (which is Pelagianism) or that humanity can be redeemed (which is Manicheanism). Or one could make this affirmation while understanding Jesus of Nazareth as being so different from us (Doceticism), or else so like us (Ebionitism), that he cannot truly bring us redemption.40
Schleiermacher’s model of heresy is an important tool in making sense of both the nature of heresy and its potential threat to the Christian faith. It posits that a heresy is fundamentally a theology that maintains the outward appearance of faith while contradicting or rendering incoherent its inner identity. This locates heresy as arising within the community of faith while at the same time identifying its potential danger to that community’s identity. Heresy amounts to a counterfeit faith lacking the intellectual coherence of orthodoxy.
There are, however, some difficulties with Schleiermacher’s approach. In the first place, it restricts heresy to areas of doctrine that are closely connected with the identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth. As we shall see in the following chapter, heresies can arise in a number of areas of Christian doctrine. So what of Trinitarian heresies such as Sabellianism? Or ecclesiological heresies such as Donatism? Although this is a legitimate criticism of Schleiermacher, its force could be blunted by arguing that Sabellianism and Donatism must both ultimately be recognized as heretical views that at least touch on the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, is often interpreted as a means of expressing the significance of Jesus as much as the nature of God. Similarly, Donatism could be argued to concern the question of the conditions under which the “benefits of Christ” are transferred to believers.
Second, and perhaps more significantly, Schleiermacher tends to treat heresy as a purely intellectual phenomenon and fails to take account of its historical and social dimensions. His analysis of the four “natural heresies” is detached from any account of their origins and specific historical forms. It is well known that many heresies arose within specific communities, often in response to specific cultural pressures.41 For example, Donatism can be interpreted as a cultural movement representing an indigenous Berber reaction against the Roman imperial presence in North Africa.42 Schleiermacher’s somewhat abstract and unhistorical approach fails to account for the social factors that may give rise to certain heresies under quite specific conditions, tending instead to present heresy as a timeless matter of intellectual incoherency. More significantly, tensions between powerful individuals or ecclesiastical centers of power could easily lead to a power struggle being conceptualized as a conflict between heresy and orthodoxy. Schleiermacher’s view of individual heresies seems both inattentive to and disinterested in the real historical movements, of which he offers a theological silhouette rather than a full historical image.
Third, Schleiermacher’s account of heresy suggests that heresy is identified primarily through its intellectual incoherence. Yet an adjudication of incoherence raises questions that are not properly addressed by Schleiermacher’s model. At what point does incoherence become heretical? Who makes the decision that a viewpoint is heretical? The decision that a given theology is to be regarded as heretical is corporate, not individual, reflecting the judgment of the church. Heresy is a social reality reflecting the judgments of networks of individuals.43 As studies of the Arian controversy have made clear, the fourth century in particular witnessed significant changes in the ecclesiastical structures and processes through which “right belief” was assessed.44
So who decides what is heresy? Schleiermacher appears to assume that it is self-evident from the incoherence of heretical ideas. Yet this fails to do justice to the historical evidence, which points to the importance of the community of faith in judging and declaring certain views to constitute heresy. As Malcolm Lambert famously pointed out, “[I]t takes two to create a heresy; the heretic, with his dissident beliefs and practices; and the Church, to condemn his views and to define what is orthodox doctrine.”45 Heresy represents a judgment by the church that a certain set of ideas are unacceptable. Any account of heresy must therefore take account both of the core ideas of a heresy, and of the reasons that, and the procedures by which, they came to be held to be dangerous and destructive.
Developing this concern further, it may be pointed out that the early church saw heresy as dangerous and potentially destructive of faith. While a threat to the coherence of faith would have been an important contributing cause to this concern, there are more fundamental issues at stake. Schleiermacher’s model of heresy does not appear well adapted to dealing with the idea of heresy as a “Trojan horse” that covertly smuggles the elements of alternative worldviews into the church. Theological destabilization may indeed arise from internal inconsistencies; yet there are other potential causes of such instability, including the intrusion of alien ideas, that duly give rise to incoherence within the Christian worldview.
The questions raised in this chapter suggest that it is both difficult and possibly even somewhat unhelpful to attempt to develop a general theoretical approach to heresy without looking in some detail at individual historical heresies, taking due account of their historical emergence. In the two chapters that follow, we shall consider some of the great classical heresies of Christianity and attempt to understand their origins, the concerns of those who developed them, why the church regarded them as dangerous, and the processes by which they were declared to be heretical.