What is heterodoxy? What does it mean for something to be heterodox?

But there is no "must be" in reference to heterodoxy. People might remain, and like to remain, with their heterodoxy, but heresy does not mean bad doctrine, although this might go along with it. It means that people might get too hot in their zeal, and, being reproved for their party spirit, they refuse to stand it any longer, and they get away. They break loose from fellowship and form some new thing which has not the sanction of the word of God. That is what, in scripture, is called heresy. The doctrine might be sound enough in a general way. There might be no blasphemies, nor heterodoxy, strictly speaking, but there is the heart entirely wrong and seeking its own things instead of the things of Jesus Christ.

All heterodoxy is evil; but not to bring the doctrine of the Christ, perfect man and true God in one person, is fatal and admits of no compromise. Neither a mother nor her children can plead innocence if they yield. It is high treason to admit friendly terms, if we own Christian ground. The lady might be ever so orthodox: but to welcome to the house one who, claiming to be a Christian teacher, denied Christ's deity or humanity (i.e. their union in one person), is to give up the foundation implicitly; and he or she who receives out of courtesy, liberal feeling, or any other human motive, becomes partaker of "his wicked works," even if the evil doctrine be declined. The truth of Christ admits of no neutrality. Truth, love, and obedience must be in those who, believing in Christ, have life eternal and the Holy Spirit. We go right as Christians only as the eye, the heart, is true to Christ. Not "transgressing" but going forward, instead of abiding in the doctrine, loses all. "Transgressing" is spurious: it was development rather, which cannot consist with the truth.

All truth is no doubt important in its place and season; but it is worse than ignorance to put the body on the same level as the Head. Ecclesiastical error, even if real and grave, never approaches the denial of the doctrine of Christ. Weigh how the apostle of love, the elder, solemnly warns us to be on our guard in such a case. We are not free to receive even privately, much less publicly, those who bring not the doctrine of Christ. We are unequivocally bound not only to disallow heterodoxy in general, but in particular to reject that which is, and those who are, a lie against Christ, yea, to treat those who receive such as partakers of the same evil deeds. But we are not entitled to equalise the church with Christ, like a Romanist, or to put ecclesiastical error along with evil against Christ's person. This is not faith, but fanaticism: what can we think of such as conceive, or of those that circulate, this trash as the truth?

Heresy is in principle the playing of the flesh with truth, and is the sending into parties those who should be one. May the Lord keep His saints watching and praying.

Heresy is not departing from the figure of truth, but from the Spirit of truth, and it is the spirit of the heretic we are called upon to judge as a work of the flesh more than the fruit in the form of doctrine.

(4) Heresy

You have another one which is not so often known - the matter of heresy. A heretic in the scriptures is not the same as a heretic as the word has grown in ecclesiastical circles. Nowadays, you think of a heretic as somebody who teaches serious false doctrine but in the scriptures it is one who is sectarian, one who has separated from or is separated from the fellowship of the apostles. In I Corinthians 11, you find that Paul says to them, "...there be divisions (or schools of opinion) among you - for there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you."

Yet Paul refused to allow Christianity to be called a sect because God had spoken in it, and all men were to hear. It was no opinion but revealed truth, and this is the key to the condemnation of heresy in the apostolic writings. There is to be no opinion, no mere human choice among Christians. The one truth claims the allegiance of all. The Word of God has been given to us, and the one Holy Spirit is given to bring us all to one mind about it. All departure from this is to be utterly condemned.

Some heresies have been formed upon the denial of foundation doctrines, as Arianism, and some upon points of superstructure, as Anabaptism. But of all kinds of heresy, I conceive the worst is that which is so formed upon truth as to make truth appear to be on one side, and the Holy Ghost opposed to it on the other. If God saw me (for example) separating myself in spirit, affection, thought, or action, from the members of Christ now on the earth, to a section of it which was characterised either by knowledge of truth, or by supposed freedom from error, or if He saw me trying to form such a party, He would, I judge, see marks of incipient heresy. In both cases I should be opposing truth to the Holy Ghost; in the former case I set the Holy Ghost in life in the members, below knowledge or freedom from error; in the latter case, I, in practice, oppose knowledge, etc., to the Holy Ghost in His mode of working; for His aim is not to form schools well taught, or free from defect and error, but to build up the living members of God's household in separatedness to God and in brotherly love. If such a thing worked out into a sect it would be pre-eminently evil.

And if separation becomes a duty for every true and faithful believer where the defilement of the temple of God is in question, how much more so, where the honour of God, and of His Son Himself is at stake, as when heresy has assumed the character of heterodoxy, i.e. false and God-dishonouring doctrine! The injunctions of Holy Writ, though plain enough in the former case, are here still more distinct and solemnly decisive, as the following passages show: 1 Cor. 15:12-13, 19; 33-34; Gal. 5:7-12; 1 Tim. 1:18-20; 2 Tim. 2:16-18; Titus 3:10-11; 2 Peter 2:1-3; 1 John 2:18-26; 2 John 9-11; Jude 3, 4.

But we are looking not at mere errors, but marking those chiefly that denied the full truth of the Person of Christ, which are not errors, but infidelity. A man may hold wrong views concerning many things in the Bible. He may be singular in his views as to the mode and subjects of baptism, as to the doctrines of election and the Lord's coming; if he be sound and scriptural as to the Person of Christ, His perfect manhood, and His perfect deity he cannot be fatally wrong upon other and lesser points. But the heretic who denies the true humanity, or essential Godhead of Christ is an infidel.