Heresy is proposing some unorthodox change to an established system of belief, especially a
religion, that conflicts with the previously established opinion of scholars of that belief such as
canon. It is sometimes confused with
apostasy which is disaffiliation from orthodoxy and
blasphemy which is defamation of orthodox opinion.
The study of heresy is
heresiology. The founder or leader of a heretical movement is called a heresiarch. One who espouses heresy is called a heretic.
Etymology
The word "heresy" comes from the
Greek ,
hairesis (from
,
haireomai, "choose"), which means either a
choice of beliefs or a
faction of believers, or a school of thought.
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.
The term heresy is often perceived as a
value judgment and the expression of a view from within an established
belief system.
Religious heresy
Christianity
The use of the word "heresy" in the context of Christianity 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- "straight" +
doxa "belief") and his position eventually evolved into the position of the early Christian Church.
Heretics usually do not define their own beliefs as heretical. For instance, Roman Catholics hold 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 heresy 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.
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. 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.
Heresy in Islam
Many in the two main bodies of
Islam—
Sunnis and the
Shi'as—have regarded the other as heretical. Groups like the
Ismailis, the
Hurufiya, the
Alawis, the
Bektashi and even the
Sufis have also been regarded as heretical by some. Although Sufism is often accepted as valid by Shi'a and many Sunnis, the relatively recent movement of
Wahhabism view it as heretical.
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. The revisionist
paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, who published his findings as
The Dinosaur Heresies, jokingly treated the mainstream view of dinosaurs as
dogma.
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" a "
Democratic heresy" or a "
Republican heresy", are
metaphors which invariably retain a
subtext that links orthodoxies in
geology or
biology or any other field to religion. These expanded metaphoric senses allude to both the
difference between the person's views and the mainstream, and the
boldness of such a person in propounding these views.
Variance from orthodox
Marxism-Leninism is described as "right" or "left deviationism." The cult of Scientology uses the term "squirreling" to refer to unauthorized alterations of its teachings or methods.
Selected quotations
- 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 new ideas that 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."
- 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."
See also
