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On the Function of Heresy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Paul Parvis OP
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Extract

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.

Information

Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 824 , February 1989, pp. 96 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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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.

9 Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine. Vol I. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (1–600) (Chicago, 1971), p. 70Google Scholar.

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.

11 Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium xxiii (29).

12 Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London, 1845), pp. 58. 62Google Scholar.

13 Newman, John Henry, Lectures on the Prophetical Office of the Church, Viewed Relatively to Romanism and Popular Protestantism (London, 1837), p. 63Google Scholar.

14 Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium ii (3); note also the order in xxvii (38).

15 The Confessions of S. Augustine, ed. from a former translation by E.B. Pusey, Library of Fathers I (Oxford, 1838). pp. viii, xiii.

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.