What the word heretic originally meant and why it became a condemnation

Heretics are not what they used to be.

Like many other words, “heresy” comes from the Greek. And as happened with many, at some point it moved away from its original meaning.

LOOK: Who was Pontius Pilate, the powerful Roman governor who supposedly “washed his hands” before Jesus

But this has gone from being an essentially neutral term to a potentially fatal sentence.

The funny thing is that it all started with Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish preacher and religious leader who defied the authorities by declaring himself the son of God.

A heretic in the sense we know it today?

Heresy comes from the Greek word hair, which means ‘I choose’, or haerese‘something that has been chosen’particularly by doctors and philosophers.

“If you belonged to a certain school of medicine, say you were a follower of the physician Galen, you would belong to the Galen heresy,” explained classicist Catherine Nixey, author of “Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Children of God” (2024).

The term simply indicated the choice of a recognized tradition of thought and practice to follow.

And it could have positive connotations, as it implied that you used your intellect to make independent decisions.

This did not mean that there were no discussions, and even heated ones, but even if a Platonic heretic did not agree with a Stoic, what they censored were the ideas, and not the fact that they were heretics, since both were heretics.

“Heresy was a choice.

“But when Christianity came along, choice instantly became a bad thing, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ He didn’t say, ‘I am one of the ways, one of the ways. truths, one of the lives’.

“So no more choice was allowed,” Nixey said in an interview with BBC HistoryExtra.

With a single truth, that new faith that gained more and more followers and in a matter of a few centuries captivated the Empire that initially rejected it, it was imperative that there was no room for doubt.

But what was this truth?

many truths

Pages from the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, perhaps dating to the 4th century AD, Coptic Museum, Cairo, Egypt. (GET IMAGES).

Christianity was born in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, an area where there was no shortage of “truths”.

There were plenty of gods; The Romans themselves worshiped 12 main deities and dozens of others and, as polytheists, in principle saw nothing fundamentally wrong with having more deities, so several local deities were added to theirs.

But polytheism was not the most serious problem for the new Christian faith, the greatest threat to ecclesiastical authorities would be the enemy within: the heretics.

It took time for the word to absorb the meaning it would have, as one cannot be a heretic, in the Christian sense, without deviating from an orthodoxy – from the Greek orthodox“of correct opinion or belief” -, and this was not automatic.

Early on, “many different stories were told about Jesus,” Nixey noted. “There were many, many, many different versions,” including some that didn’t portray him in such a favorable light.

Among the texts considered apocryphal, for example, is the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”, composed in the middle of the second century AD, in which little Jesus “annihilates those who irritate him and destroys those who simply bother him”, he says. historian

The situation is so difficult that “Joseph says to Mary: ‘Don’t let him go, because all those who provoke him will die’”.

In addition to the proliferation of stories, There were several interpretations.which created “different types of early Christianity”.

The Nag Hammadi manuscripts, found in 1945 in Egypt, are an example of this wide range of early Christian religious views.

The Gnostics, for example, thought that the real world was evil, incapable of containing or deriving from a true divinity, which is why – according to their view – Jesus had not actually been on Earth: what was seen was a specter, like The story continues. An article from the University of Utah.

For them, Christians should find their own way to heaven by exploring their personal feelings, without participating in empty rituals that do not have the clear approval of Christ.

Although it took centuries, the Gnostics were silenced and eradicated, but even more dangerous internal enemies would emerge, namely the Aryansa more organized and more influential doctrine, willing to question orthodoxy.

They came to challenge nothing less than the Church’s decisions about the nature of Jesus’ divinity.

For an institution that was gaining more and more power in the world, it was necessary adopt a single versiona truth that would facilitate the recruitment of converts and separate “them” from “us”, even within their own ranks.

Heresy was no longer a choice.

High danger

“The Church defeating heresy”, attributed to Charles Le Brun. (Getty Images).

In 381 AD, Theodosius I, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, issued a decree that all his subjects must subscribe to belief in the Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

“We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Orthodox Christians; but as for the rest, since, in our opinion, they are fools, we decree that they will be branded with the ignominious names of heretics.“, dictated the emperor Theodosius.

“The edict defined Christian orthodoxy and ended a lively and extensive debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical,” notes historian Charles Freeman, author of “381 AD: Heretics, Pagans, and the Christian State.” .

“For the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization, free thought was unequivocally suppressed”, he highlights.

What “choice” meant under the reign of the Christian Church became “error.”

Any questioning or deviation from orthodoxy was heresy, in its new meaning.

“The choice began to be seen as an evil. More than an evil, it was an evil,” said Nixey.

“In texts about heretics, they are often represented as snakes or insects. They are things that harm you. They are a poison, a gangrene, something that must be cut, removed and destroyed.

“Saint Augustine has a memorable phrase. He says heretics are those the Church avoids like shit.”

The classicist noted that although early on, just 50 years after the Christians came to power, entire cities of heretics were massacred in part of the Empire, and texts such as the Theodosian Code, promulgated in 438 by Theodosius II, are the greatest evidence of this persecution.

“The last book is full of laws against heretics. It says that they will be fined this amount of gold, they will be whipped with lead and weights, they will lose their homes, they will lose their jobs, they will be expelled from the cities, they will be exiled.

“There are threats of physical violence, but social pressure has a powerful effect, so one of the first things they do to crack down on heretics is to threaten their livelihoods.”

However, “later, on the eve of the Inquisition, things get worse. During this period, heresy is an extremely dangerous word“.

Another transformation

“Galileo Galilei before the Holy Office in the Vatican”, by Robert Fleury. (Getty Images).

The accusation of heresy was not limited to purely religious doctrine.

Authorities, notes Philosophy Now editor Grant Bartley in “The Truth About Heresy?”, were right to fear heretics.

On the one hand because they challenge the “‘pure thought in accordance with the truth’ that the authorities would like to promote”, and on the other because “if heretics demonstrate that the official beliefs expressed by the authority are wrong, authority loses all justification“.

This explains why the cardinals of the Catholic Church tried to silence Galileo.

The idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, affirmed by the Italian astronomer whom the Inquisition classified as heretical, did not obviously put people’s souls in danger, but contradicted what the Church then said was true.

And this threatened to undermine his power, which extended across all fields.

Over the centuries, the word “heretic” came to be used not only to describe defiance of religious authority, but of authorities of other types.

In its second meaning in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language appears “Person who disagrees with or deviates from the doctrine or norms of an institution, organization, academy, etc.“.

And she wasn’t the only one who changed.

Its counterpart, ‘orthodox’, appears in the same dictionary as “According to the fundamental doctrine of a political, philosophical, etc. system.” It is “In accordance with generally accepted habits or practices“.

Source: Elcomercio