What Is Heresy? - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

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his mouth and what he believes in his heart. 22 The practice of fellowship, to be sure, is to be based on one’s
confession in word and deed; only God “looketh upon the heart” (I Sam. 16:7).
10. God permits heresies “that they which are approved may be made manifest” (I Cor. 11:19). The
stand men take toward false teaching separates those who have God’s approval from those who do not.
Heretics, insofar as they are errorists, do not have God’s approval. Luther also points out, “Heresy and the sects,
although they do a great deal of damage, nevertheless, also result in this that they drive us to a more diligent
study of God’s Word.” 23
11. Heresy is responsible for the divisions in the church. It causes disruptions. It produces sects. Not
those who in obedience to God’s command separate themselves from heretics are the division makers, but the
heretics “cause divisions and offenses,” and they do this by teaching “contrary to the doctrine” we have learned
from the Scriptures (Rom. 16:17). Hence, the term αἵρεσις is also applied to the groups of those who hold
heretical views.
12. The claim that “heresies” are groups which are “outside Christianity and the Christian Church”
(Kittel) is patently without foundation (cf. I Cor. 11:19, “heresies among you”). If these were extra ecclesiam,
there would be no reason for Paul to speak of them as ἐν ὑμῖν. In Galatians 5:19–21 Paul lists “heresies” among
the works of the flesh to which the flesh of Christians also is prone. Note also II Peter 2:1, “false teachers
among you [ἐν ὑμῖν, i.e., within the Christian community, the visible Church], who privily shall bring in
[παρεισάξουσιν—introduce into the Church alongside the truth] damnable heresies.”
Prof. Lehninger aptly points out, “Not the enemies from without who openly and boldly (“mit offenem
Visier”) attack the Christian religion are the heretics against whom the Scriptures warn us in so many places,
but they are people who arise within the Church and who clothe themselves in the mantle of Christianity.” 24
Luther says categorically, “No heresies arise except in the churches and out of the churches.” 25 While Satan, the
archenemy, on the one hand endeavors to destroy the Church by persecution from without, he also, on the other
hand, carries on a fifth column activity, seeking to destroy it from within by undermining its doctrinal
foundation. 26
13. Before we conclude this discussion of the meaning of the terms “heresy” and “heretic” in Scripture,
a few thoughts which were briefly alluded to in the foregoing analysis need to be amplified and emphasized.
22 Cf., e.g., Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis, 1950), Vol. I, p. 6: “We do not call into question the personal faith of
every theologian who from the safe retreat of his study or lecture room attacks the satisfactio vicaria. Luther, too, takes cognizance of
such a ‘felicitous inconsistency’ when he says of the theologians whom Erasmus quoted against him that the language they used inter
disputandum was not the language their heart spoke before God.” He refers to Luther Opp. va. VII, 166; St. L. XVIII: 1730. J. I.
Packer and O. R. Johnston in Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will (London, 1957), pp. 114–115, translate the passage as follows:
“Admittedly, these selfsame saints, when engaged in argument, spoke of ‘free-will’ in a different strain. But that just illustrates what I
see to be a universal experience: men are different when occupied with words and disputations from what they are when occupied
with experience and practice. In the former case, their speech does not accord with what they previously felt; in the latter, their
feelings do not accord with what they previously said. Men should therefore be assessed, godly and ungodly alike, rather by what they
feel than by what they say.” Similarly, Dr. C. F. W. Walther writes: “We know that there are errors which proceed from weakness, just
as there are sins that are caused by weakness, and that a Christian may intellectually err even with respect to a fundamental matter
without subverting the foundation in his heart, not to mention how wrong it would be to assume that a person necessarily destroys the
foundation of faith if he errs in a non-fundamental point,” (op. cit., p. 354).
23 Die Ketzerei und Secten, ob sie schon fast schaden, so schaffen sic doch das damit, dasz sie uns zur fleisigern Erkenntnis
goettlicher Schrift treiben (Concordanz, III, p. 32).
24 Op. cit., p. 91.
25 Es entstehen keine Ketzereien, ohne allein in den Kirchen und aus den Kirchen, Concordanz, p. 23.
26 How the devil repeatedly dips into the same old bag of tricks in order to tempt succeeding generations has been perceptively set
forth by Prof. E. Reim in “Ancient Heresies in Modern Garb,” Theologische Quartalschrift, January, 1949, p. 11ff. Prof. Reim also
reminds us of the only effective means of protection we have against the devil’s insidious attacks: “It is good to know something about
the ancient heresies. It is better to be able to recognize them also in their modern form. But unless we ourselves are deeply rooted in
the Word of His Grace, in the Gospel of Salvation through the Blood of the Son of God, all this head knowledge will avail us nothing.
The blessed inheritance of which Paul speaks will slip from our nerveless fingers and will be lost just as surely as though it were torn
from us by the very hands of Anti-Christ himself” (p. 12).