HERERO, or Ovaherero (“merry people”), a Bantu people of German South-West Africa, living in the region known as Damaraland or Hereroland. They call themselves Ovaherero and their language Otshi-herero. Sometimes they are described as Cattle Damara or “Damara of the Plains” in distinction from the Hill Damara who are of mixed blood and Hottentots in language. The Herero, whose main occupation is that of cattle-rearing, are a warlike race, possessed of considerable military skill, as was shown in their campaigns of 1904-5 against the Germans. (See further [German South-West Africa].)
HERESY, the English equivalent of the Greek word αἵρεσις which is used in the Septuagint for “free choice,” in later classical literature for a philosophical school or sect as “chosen” by those who belong to it, in Philo for religion, in Josephus for a religious party (the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes).
It is in this last sense that the term is used in the New Testament, usually with an implicit censure of the factious spirit to which such divisions are due. The term is applied to the Sadducees (Acts v. 17) and Pharisees (Acts xv. New Testament. 5, xxvi. 5). From the standpoint of opponents, Christianity is itself so described (Acts xxiv. 14, xxviii. 22). In the Pauline Epistles it is used with severe condemnation of the divisions within the Christian Church itself. Heresies with “enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, envyings” are reckoned among “the works of the flesh” (Gal. v. 20). Such divisions, proofs of a carnal mind, are censured in the church of Corinth (1 Cor. iii. 3, 4); and the church of Rome is warned against those who cause them (Rom. xvi. 17). The term “schism,” afterwards distinguished from “heresy,” is also used of these divisions (1 Cor. i. 10). The estrangements of the rich and the poor in the church at Corinth, leading to a lack of Christian fellowship even at the Lord’s Supper, is described as “heresy” (1 Cor. xi. 19). Breaches of the law of love, not errors about the truth of the Gospel, are referred to in these passages. But the first step towards the ecclesiastical use of the term is found already in 2 Peter ii. 1, “Among you also there shall be false teachers who shall privily bring in destructive heresies (R.V. margin “sects of perdition”), denying even the Master that bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.” The meaning here suggested is “falsely chosen or erroneous tenets. Already the emphasis is moving from persons and their temper to mental products—from the sphere of sympathetic love to that of objective truth” (Bartlet, art. “Heresy,” Hastings’s Bible Dictionary). As the parallel passage in Jude, verse 4, shows, however, that these errors had immoral consequences, the moral reference is not absent even from this passage. The first employment of the term outside the New Testament is also its first use for theological error. Ignatius applies it to Docetism (Ad Trall. 6). As doctrine came to be made more important, heresy was restricted to any departure from the recognized creed. Even Constantine the Great describes the Christian Church as “the Catholic heresy,” “the most sacred heresy” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, x. c. 5, the letter to Chrestus, bishop of Syracuse); but this use was very soon abandoned, and the Catholic Church distinguished itself from the dissenting minorities, which it condemned as “heresies.” The use of the term heresy in the New Testament cannot be regarded as defining the attitude of the Christian Church, even in the Apostolic age, towards errors in belief. The Apostolic writings show a vehement antagonism towards all teaching opposed to the Gospel. Paul declares anathema the Judaizer, who required the circumcision of the Gentiles (Gal. i. 8), and even calls them the “dogs of the concision” and “evil workers” (Phil. iii. 2). The elders of Ephesus are warned against the false teachers who would appear in the church after the apostle’s death as “grievous wolves not sparing the flock” (Acts xx. 29); and the speculations of the Gnostics are denounced as “seducing spirits and doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. iv. 1), as “profane babblings and oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called” (vi. 20). John’s warnings are as earnest and severe. Those who deny the fact of the Incarnation are described as “antichrist,” and as “deceivers” (1 John iv. 3; 2 John 7). The references to heretics in 2 Peter and Jude have already been dealt with. This antagonism is explicable by the character of the heresies that threatened the Christian Church in the Apostolic age. Each of these heresies involved such a blending of the Gospel with either Jewish or pagan elements, as would not only pollute its purity, but destroy its power. In each of these the Gospel was in danger of being made of none effect by the environment, which it must resist in order that it might transform (see Burton’s Bampton Lectures on The Heresies of the Apostolic Age).
These Gnostic heresies, which threatened to paganize the Christian Church, were condemned in no measured terms by the fathers. These false teachers are denounced as “servants of Satan, beasts in human shape, dealers Gnosticism. in deadly poison, robbers and pirates.” Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian and even Clement of Alexandria and Origen are as severe in condemnation as the later fathers (cf. Matt. xiii. 35-43; Tertullian, Praescr. 31). While the necessity of the heresies is admitted in accordance with 1 Cor. xi. 19, yet woe is pronounced on those who have introduced them, according to Matt. xviii. 7. (This application of these passages, however, is of altogether doubtful validity.) “It was necessary,” says Tertullian (ibid. 30), “that the Lord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor.” The very worst motives, “pride, disappointed ambition, sensual lust, and avarice,” are recklessly imputed to the heretics; and no possibility of morally innocent doubt, difficulty or difference in thought is admitted. Origen and Augustine do, however, recognize that even false teachers may have good motives. While we must admit that there was a very serious peril to the thought and life of the Christian Church in the teaching thus denounced, yet we must not forget that for the most part these teachers are known to us only in the ex parte representation that their opponents have given of them; and we must not assume that even their doctrines, still less their characters, were so bad as they are described.
The attitude of the church in the post-Nicene period differs from that in the ante-Nicene in two important respects. (1) As has already been indicated, the earlier heresies threatened to introduce Jewish or pagan elements into the faith of the church, and it was necessary that they should be vigorously resisted if the church was to retain its distinctive character. Many of the later heresies were differences in the interpretation of Christian truth, which did not in the same way threaten the very life of the church. No vital interest of Christian faith justified the extravagant denunciations in which theological partisanship so recklessly and ruthlessly indulged. (2) In the ante-Nicene period only ecclesiastical penalties, such as reproof, deposition or excommunication, could be imposed. In the post-Nicene the union of church and state transformed theological error into legal offence (see below).
We must now consider the definition of heresy which was gradually reached in the Christian Church. It is “a religious error held in wilful and persistent opposition to the truth after it has been defined and declared by the Christian definition. church in an authoritative manner,” or “pertinax defensio dogmatis ecclesiae universalis judicio condemnati” (Schaff’s Ante-Nicene Christianity, ii. 512-516). (i.) It “denotes an opinion antagonistic to a fundamental article of the Christian faith,” due to the introduction of “foreign elements” and resulting in a perversion of Christianity, and an amalgamation with it of ideas discordant with its nature (Fisher’s History of Christian Doctrine, p. 9). It has been generally assumed that the ecclesiastical authority was always competent to determine what are the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, and to detect any departures from them; but it is necessary to admit the possibility that the error was in the church, and the truth was with the heresy. (ii.) There cannot be any heresy where there is no orthodoxy, and, therefore, in the definition it is assumed that the church has declared what is the truth or the error in any matter. Accordingly “heresy is to be distinguished from defective stages of Christian knowledge. For example, the Jewish believers, including the Apostles themselves, at the outset required the Gentile believers to be circumcised. They were not on this account chargeable with heresy. Additional light must first come in, and be rejected, before that earlier opinion could be thus stigmatized. Moreover, heresies are not to be confounded with tentative and faulty hypotheses broached in a period prior to the scrutiny of a topic of Christian doctrine, and before that scrutiny has led the general mind to an assured conclusion. Such hypotheses—for example, the idea that in the person of Christ the Logos is substituted for a rational human spirit—are to be met with in certain early fathers” (ibid. p. 10). Origen indulged in many speculations which were afterwards condemned, but, as these matters were still open questions in his day, he was not reckoned a heretic. (iii.) In accordance with the New Testament use of the term heresy, it is assumed that moral defect accompanies the intellectual error, that the false view is held pertinaciously, in spite of warning, remonstrance and rebuke; aggressively to win over others, and so factiously, to cause division in the church, a breach in its unity.
A distinction is made between “heresy” and “schism” (from Gr. σχίζειν, rend asunder, divide). “The fathers commonly use ‘heresy’ of false teaching in opposition to Catholic doctrine, and ‘schism’ of a breach of Schism. discipline, in opposition to Catholic government” (Schaff). But as the claims of the church to be the guardian through its episcopate of the apostolic tradition, of the Christian faith itself, were magnified, and unity in practice as well as in doctrine came to be regarded as essential, this distinction became a theoretical rather than a practical one. While severely condemning, both Irenaeus and Tertullian distinguished schismatics from heretics. “Though we are by no means entitled to say that they acknowledged orthodox schismatics they did not yet venture to reckon them simply as heretics. If it was desired to get rid of these, an effort was made to impute to them some deviation from the rule of faith; and under this pretext the church freed herself from the Montanists and the Monarchians. Cyprian was the first to proclaim the identity of heretics and schismatics by making a man’s Christianity depend on his belonging to the great episcopal church confederation. But in both East and West, this theory of his became established only by very imperceptible degrees, and indeed, strictly speaking, the process was never completed. The distinction between heretics and schismatics was preserved because it prevented a public denial of the old principles, because it was advisable on political grounds to treat certain schismatic communities with indulgence, and because it was always possible in case of need to prove heresy against the schismatics.” (Harnack’s History of Dogma, ii. 92-93).
There was considerable controversy in the early church as to the validity of heretical baptism. As even “the Christian virtues of the heretics were described as hypocrisy and love of ostentation,” so no value whatever was Heretical baptism. attached by the orthodox party to the sacraments performed by heretics. Tertullian declares that the church can have no communion with the heretics, for there is nothing common; as they have not the same God, and the same Christ, so they have not the same baptism (De bapt. 15). Cyprian agreed with him. The validity of heretical baptism was denied by the church of Asia Minor as well as of Africa; but the practice of the Roman Church was to admit without second baptism heretics who had been baptized with the name of Christ, or of the Holy Trinity. Stephen of Rome attempted to force the Roman practice on the whole church in 253. The controversy his intolerance provoked was closed by Augustine’s controversial treatise De Baptismo, in which the validity of baptism administered by heretics is based on the objectivity of the sacrament. Whenever the name of the three-one God is used, the sacrament is declared valid by whomsoever it may be performed. This was a triumph of sacramentarianism, not of charity.