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On the Function of Heresy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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One of the things which must count as Catholic doctrine is the affirmation that it is possible to get it seriously wrong. In this article I hope to offer some remarks on the function of heresy in the articulation of the Church’s faith. I would like to begin with a question, the possible answers to which have implications: how much do heretics sleep?
By 1843, John Henry Newman had come to believe that heretics were by nature sluggish creatures. In his fourteenth University Sermon, on ‘The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine’, Newman spoke of the ‘ordinary torpor’ of heretics from which they ‘never wake up … but to exchange courtesies and meditate coalitions’.
That was in its own way a radical answer, a radical break with the age-old view that heretics were ever-active, ever-vigilant. This view had, in particular, been the answer of virtually the whole of that patristic tradition in which Newman’s thought had been so largely formed.
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- Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Newman, John Henry, Sermons. Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached before the University of Oxford (London, 1843) p. 321Google Scholar.
2 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I. xxviii. 1 (= I, 219 Harvey) and 111. xxiv. 2 (= 11, 1 Harvey).
3 Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses I. x. 2 (= I, 92–94 Harvey) and 111. Praef. (= 11, I Harvey).
4 Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica VII. 48 (= P.G. 67, 841).
5 Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica V. 14 (the particular reference here is toMontanism).
6 Newman, (University) Sermons. pp. 318–319.
7 Ibid. p. 316.
8 Bauer, Walter, orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, 2nd ed. tr. A.Kraft, Robert el al. (London, 1972)Google Scholar. The first German edition appeared in 1934.
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10 Letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Alexander of Byzantium 44 (=Urkunde 14 Opitz). Williams must be right in dating this document early in the dispute‐that is. around 32112‐rather than to 324 as Opitz does: see Williams, Rowan, Arius, Heresy and Tradition (London, 1987). p. 58Google Scholar.
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16 Newman, Prophetical Office, pp. 68, 69.
17 The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem. Library of Fathers 11, pp. x–xi.
18 Newman, Essay on Development, pp. 17, 24.
19 Ibid., p. 9.
20 Ibid., p. 297.
21 Ibid., p. 203.
22 Newman, John Henry, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Being a History of His Religious Opinions, ed. Svaglic, Martin J. (Oxford, 107), pp. 110–111Google Scholar.
23 Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium xxi (26).
24 Newman, Essay on Development, p. 39.
25 Newman, (University) Sermons, p. 336.
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