Heresy and Schism

The Bible has much to say about heresies and schisms.

The word heresy, like its adjective form heretical and its personal form heretic, is from the Greek word hairesis. It means sect or party, a division within a larger group that distinguishes itself according to a teacher or a teaching. So the Bible speaks of the “sect” of the Pharisees (Acts 15:5; 26:5).There is also “the sect of the Sadducees” (5:17). The accusers of Paul also used this Greek word to describe the apostle’s relationship to Christians: “a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (24:5).The use of this word in 2 Peter 2:1 is different. This passage refers to “false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.” There the word “heresies” refers to the actual teachings that draw lines of division in a group and form smaller groups within the group.

The other word, schism, can refer to a physical rent or tear. Jesus used this word in his parable of a garment in Matthew 9:16, saying that when a new patch is sewn on a rent in an old garment, the rent, or schism, is made worse because of the newness of the patch. Paul used the word in a figure of speech to talk about division in the body of Christ: “that there should be no schism in the body” (1 Cor. 12:25). First Corinthians 1:10 and 11:18 use the word to refer to divisions in the church itself. See also John 7:43, 9:16, and 10:19, which note the effect of Jesus’ preaching and miracles that the Jews became divided on whether Jesus was the Christ of God.

The Bible also defines several points of relationship between these two words, heresy and schism.

The most fundamental relationship is that of cause and effect, division being the cause and sect the effect. To use the words directly: schism causes heresy. Splitting, tearing, and dividing are actions that result in their effects of parties, sects, and groups in the church. What scripture teaches us is that men themselves split up the church. The action belongs to them. They work, and the result of their work is that parties are formed. In this relationship heresies—parties or sects—are the effect of the teaching.

Then where do heresies as false doctrines and teachings come in? They are sometimes the tools, or instruments, of men who cause division in the church.

There are two types of schism in the church. One involves false doctrine, and the other does not.

The one kind of schism we see in operation in 1 Corinthians 1, 11, and 12, which were referenced earlier. The members of the church drove this kind of division, which resulted in parties. Paul and Apollos had preached the gospel to the church at Corinth. The church members there heard the gospel of Christ. They had also heard about the apostle Peter. Paul, Apollos, and Peter were the servants of Jesus Christ. They all preached the same gospel of Christ. But the Corinthian church divided itself, with each division claiming a special allegiance to one of these men. In doing so, the members were schismatic. They rent the body of Christ into factions.

The other kind of schism in the church is driven by an individual leader or leaders of the church. The apostle Paul warned about that when he met with the elders of the church of Ephesus: “Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). Men worked in this way: they spoke these perverse things, twisting the truth into unique teachings and asking for allegiance to themselves. They were successful, “draw[ing] away disciples after them.” According to 2 Peter 2:1, these are the “damnable heresies” that false teachers bring in.

Another relationship that the Bible gives between heresy and schism is that they are wholly united as means to destroy the church of Jesus Christ. That unholy union is all the more striking when we consider that each has a different purpose with its destructive power. Schism takes aim at the church of Jesus Christ in its unity. But heresy as doctrinal error takes aim at the truth to destroy it. How are schism and heresy then united against the church? Their union is due to the spiritual nature of the church of Jesus Christ. The foundation of the church of Jesus Christ is the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.

The spiritual character of heresy, in the service of schism, is that it tries to remove the truth from the church and the church from the truth. This is why the apostle in Acts 20:30 warned the Ephesian elders that men arising from among them would “draw away” men after themselves. They would not remain with the truth and therefore would not remain with the church. They would be drawn away out of the church.

Note well an important implication of this: there is no schism with the truth and in the truth. The true church of Jesus Christ must endure schism, but the faithful in Christ are never schismatic. Schism always comes from false doctrine in the church, what is paraded for truth and disguised as truth. Sometimes the heretic has deceived himself, and very often those following him are deceived. But the truth does not change. They are still heretics. Their tool is heresy. The consequence of their doctrines and the doctrine of those following them is schism.

The third relationship taught by the Bible is that heresy is the tool of schismatic persons. John Calvin’s statement must stand here: “Ambition is the mother of heresy.”* The Bible makes clear in its warning about heresy that the men are always prior to the teachings they teach. Heresies are marvelously imaginative and inventive. There is always a malevolent brilliance to heresies. Men in their pride suppose themselves to be superior. They do not begin thinking themselves to be superior to the truth or to Christ, who is the truth. But they suppose themselves to be superior to the books they have read or to the truth of the confessions they have studied or to faithful men who have gone before them. There is a schism already forming in their hearts and minds that breaks them from their bonds and ties to the truth. Schismatic persons become enamored with the novelties they have found, even thinking them to be found in God’s word. They also wish to have their ideas reflected and echoed by others. So they seek to persuade by all kinds of means: personality, emotion, authority and weight of office, and approval of men. They are effective in persuading. They draw men after them. They are encouraged in thinking that they are correct, that they have some new truth from the Bible to promote. They are justified by the Christians that follow them and give their approval.

But the stubborn facts remain. Their teachings are not those of the Bible. Those teachings are not orthodoxy, but heterodoxy. Their errors are wanderings from the truth. It matters not what approval they receive from men or how many follow them. It matters not whether they are vindicated by ecclesiastical assemblies. They have followers, but those following them are not following Christ. They are leaders, but they are not leading for Christ, and they are not led by Christ.

Therefore it is the duty of every church that would be a faithful church of Jesus Christ to be discerning. It is the duty of every Christian that would remain a true Christian, faithful to Jesus Christ, to be discerning. Discernment is the practical exercise of the knowledge of the truth of God’s word, the sole authority for faith and life, to apply that knowledge to every teaching presented and found. That application of knowledge is for the purpose of holding fast to that which is good and avoiding the appearance of evil. Discernment must see through persons and offices. It must set aside emotions, the weight and influence of men, the fog of confusion, and the appeal of ease and convenience. Discernment must be the love of 1 Corinthians 13:6. It must be the carefulness of 1 John 5:21. It must be the love of the freedom described in Galatians 5:1.

Distracted Confusion

Moving from the teachings of scripture about heresy to their application presents some difficulties.

Application is certainly necessary. This is clear from the warnings of scripture. There will arise false teachers in the church. These false teachers will use their “damnable heresies” to gain their followings and will disrupt the communion of the church as they work their schisms. The church is called to heed these scriptural warnings and to make proper use of them, applying them to specific, concrete situations before them. The church must clearly identify certain teachings as heretical and their teachers and followers as heretics. This judgment is part of the work of discipline, which is necessary for maintaining purity of doctrine in the church. This is one of the main purposes of deliberative assemblies in the churches, as scripture makes clear in Acts 20:28–30, Titus 1:9–11, and 2 John 10.

This necessity of application for the purposes of Christian discipline affects the word heresy in two distinct ways, one way following upon the other.

The first way is the actual and proper use of the word heresy and its relationship to schism in the church. As noted before, Christ himself built the church of Jesus Christ upon the truth of his word. Ephesians 2:20 calls attention to this character of the church as a spiritual building. It is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. The church, resting on that foundation, is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). The church is called to find its essential unity in the fact that the members together agree in the truth (1 Cor. 1; Eph. 4).

False doctrine, error, heresy, and unorthodoxy all represent a doctrine or a body of doctrines that is opposed to the doctrine of the apostles and prophets. The very nature of all these words signifies a standard by which they are judged to be deviations from the truth. False doctrine, error, heresy, and unorthodoxy are not in harmony with the truth of God’s word but militate against it. As speech, they contradict God’s word. In that opposition to God’s word, they are opposed to the church in the church’s unity and in its very existence. False doctrine is the enemy of the church; the enemy of Christ, the head of the church; and the enemy of the truth.

False doctrine, error, heresy, and unorthodoxy are destructive of the church. Schism is caused by the introduction of false doctrine into the church. That doctrine grows among the members of the church and weakens their hold on the truth. They are confused by the false doctrines, which are promoted by authoritative leaders and prominent members. The members of the church find the false doctrines appealing, more appealing than the truth. They begin to follow, then to confess, these false doctrines. Seeking to justify their hold on error, the teachers find reasons to make the truth distasteful. Then they work to find scriptural passages that condemn the truth and favor their error.

The orthodox in the church oppose this state of affairs. The faithful seek to have Christian discipline applied and judgment made by authoritative deliberative assemblies in the church. The faithful look for the ecclesiastical bodies to declare that the troublesome, false teachings are heretical. The consequence of such a judgment is that the persons who hold to the false teachings are rebuked and called to repent and to repudiate the false teachings. Should those holding the false teachings fail to submit, they would become the objects of Christian discipline, as outlined in Lord’s Day 31 of the Heidelberg Catechism.

What role do the words heresy and heretic have in all this?

In an ecclesiastical, church political context, these terms have certain, definite meanings. Heresy is that doctrine or teaching judged by an ecclesiastical assembly to be contrary to that system of truth upheld and maintained by that ecclesiastical assembly. Because heresy has this certain, definite meaning, a doctrine or teaching cannot be half heresy or nearly heresy. It is heresy, or it is not heresy. It also means that an ecclesiastical assembly cannot say that a doctrine or a teaching is only an error or a misunderstanding, as though it occupies a lower position than heresy. Church assemblies may not determine some kind of graduated scale of doctrinal error in the church, finding some doctrinal errors to be lesser than others.

We can look at article 80 of the Church Order for proof. The article mentions, among other sins, “false doctrine or heresy.” We may not suppose that these two are distinguished, so that one is considered bad and the other less bad. It is not as though false doctrine is different than heresy. Heresy is false doctrine. The distinction between heresy and false doctrine is that an ecclesiastical assembly declares a false doctrine to be heresy. However, even without an ecclesiastical declaration, a false teaching is still false doctrine and therefore serves as a ground for the suspension and deposition of officebearers.

A few examples may be helpful. We can speak of the doctrine of justification. The doctrine of justification by faith alone without works was the material principle of the Reformation. The doctrine of justification by faith alone without works was central to the Reformation. The Reformation had its energy and momentum out of that doctrine as the doctrine of the gospel. As has often been expressed, the Reformation was “the light after the darkness.” The counter-Reformation, having its summit in the Council of Trent, declared the doctrine of justification by faith alone a heresy and those who held to it heretics. Defining the doctrine, the Romish church declared it heretical. Applying the doctrine to the Reformation and to those professing and confessing it, the whole movement was declared heretical and its leaders heretics worthy of temporal and eternal punishment. The false church determined justification by faith and works to be orthodox and justification by faith alone without works to be heresy.

In the same manner we must speak of the orthodox churches of the Reformation. Although by ecclesiastical decision Rome determined that the whole Protestant Reformation was heretical, the Reformation paid no heed. It stood upon the ground of scripture alone with its teaching from scripture alone of justification by faith alone. What the Romish institution judged to be heretical was truly orthodox. The doctrine of justification by faith alone was declared to be orthodox, and justification by faith and works was declared to be heretical. An interesting side note is that both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed deemed the anti-trinitarian Servetus a heretic.

Another example is the rise of Arminianism in the Netherlands. Its advocates claimed the freedom to preach it as a system that did justice to the role of man in salvation as well as to the commands, warnings, and promises of the Bible. They claimed faithfulness to the Protestant Reformation and its doctrines. But the Synod of Dordt identified that teaching with the heresy of Pelagianism, declaring heretical that system of teaching known as Arminianism. It mattered not at all how much the Arminians claimed to be orthodox and denied they were teaching error. The Arminian party was cast out of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands for its heresy.

Another different example is the teaching of the federal vision. Presently conservative Reformed and Presbyterian churches and denominations cannot see their way to making decisive judgments about the doctrines of the federal vision. They are unwilling to call the teachings heresy and their professors and confessors heretics. They are also unwilling to discipline them.

We can also see an example in the Protestant Reformed Churches. On the basis of the Reformed creeds, these churches judged that the teaching of the conditional covenant was heretical. Officebearers were disciplined for teaching the doctrine of the conditional covenant.

Scripture uses the word heresy. Church decisions use the word heresy. Preachers, theologians, elders, and believers use the word heresy. In the use of this word, two points of significance are always joined together. The first point is that heresy must be attached to some teaching. It is a label. The same thing is true of the word heretic. It must be attached to an individual. The second point is that heresy identifies something as evil. It is strongly negative. Heresy is a really bad teaching. A heretic is a bad person. That a teaching is heresy means that it must be excluded from the church. That someone is a heretic means that he must be excluded from the church by Christian discipline.

It can happen that the second point of significance, with its strong emotional content, overtakes the first point. Then problems result. Doctrinal precision is lost. The truth becomes lost from sight, and the destructive character of the error is minimized. The question is no longer asked, what was taught? The question becomes rather, is the person who taught heresy good or bad? A perverse kind of reasoning can be employed. “He can’t be a heretic. He is nice.” “He can’t be a heretic. He is helpful.” “He can’t be a heretic. He has been good for the church.” “He can’t be a heretic. See how people love and respect him.” “He can’t be a heretic. He is a holy man, upright in his walk, full of good works and devotion to family and church.”

Another consequence is that the term heresy becomes liable to redefinition. Its objective character is stripped away, and its subjective character becomes all-embracing. A heretic can only be a heretic if he is malicious toward the truth. He cannot be a heretic if he at one time and place confesses the truth even though at another time and place denies it.

With the above mindset in view, there arises another problem. The word heresy becomes such a negative word that substitutes are designed, and those substitutes are meant to take away the real force and impact of the truth. So, first, heresy is dropped in favor of error or mistake or even confusion or misunderstanding. Confusion results. The first two terms, error and mistake, are objective. They apply to the content of teaching. But the last two terms, confusion and misunderstanding, are subjective. Confusion and misunderstanding are able to exist either in the mind of the speaker or in the mind of the hearer. The consequence is that false doctrine can hide in the confusion generated by the use of these different words.

There is another side to the above problem. The substitution of “gentler” words also introduces a division. The individual in question is declared to be in error or confused. But the very fact that he is in error or confused is made into a ground for declaring that he is not a heretic and that he cannot then be guilty of teaching heresy.

Through the real abuse of words and language, an individual can be defended instead of being declared guilty. A decision about “error” and “confusion” can be taken as a declaration of innocence. The word heretic, so far from having any concrete meaning or significance, becomes only a slur. If one uses the term heretic or heresy, he is accused of being a hateful bigot.

Another consequence of this change in meaning is that deliberative assemblies become hampered in the work of defending and maintaining the truth of God’s word against attack. If church assemblies indeed take up the work of dealing with doctrinal error and must in the course of that work define a teaching as heretical, they know they will be judged as harsh and hateful. They know that if they ascribe this heresy to an individual, they will be judged as harsh and hateful. As a consequence they may choose a different pathway. Skirting these loaded, hateful terms, they will soften their language. They will identify teachings as “error,” “untrue,” “incorrect,” or “unorthodox.” But when they do so, they will face an uphill battle for acting decisively upon their judgment. They will have to face the argument that imposing discipline is reserved for heretics. Since these questionable and controversial persons are not heretics, the church cannot possibly discipline them.

It is no surprise that men who love the truth and desire its preservation in their churches are inclined to give up in the face of such word games.

What is to be done? What guidance is there from scripture and our Reformed creeds?